Widkirk (known as the Towneley mysteries), and York have come down to us. The York plays were printed for the first time last year from a manuscript in possession of Lord Ashburnham, and as they are thus comparatively new to the reading world, we shall take our illustration rather from them than from the cycles which have been These York plays, as they had come accessible for a longer period. down to us, number in all no less than forty-eight, and their performance was distributed amongst the eighty-four guilds of the city. In this distribution a certain fitness was carefully observed; thus the representation of the Making of the Ark was entrusted to the Shipwrights, of the Flood to the Mariners and Fishmongers, of the Miracle of Cana to the Vintners. On the other hand, the smaller guilds had to club together to bear the expenses of a play, and in one instance we find no less than six of them thus associated. The expenses were by no means small, amounting sometimes to as much as £15, or almost £150 in our own money, and a large item in them was for the costly, if sometimes strangely conceived, dresses of the performers. Owing to the accountants' habit of calling the players by the names of the sacred characters they were intended to represent, writers on miracle-plays have often been tempted to make some very Such an poor fun out of the bills which have come down to us. entry, however, as 'item for setting the world on fire, fivepence,' is really charming in its incongruity. The utmost care was taken to select fit and qualified actors, and on April 3, 1476, it was ordered by the City Council, That yearly, in the time of Lent, there shall be called before the Mayor for the time being, four of the most cunning, discreet, and able players within this City, to search, hear, and examine all the players and plays and pageants throughout all the artificers belonging to Corpus Christi play. And all such as they shall find sufficient in person and cunning, to the honour of the City and the worship of the said crafts, for to admit and able; and all other insufficient persons, either in cunning, voice or person, to discharge, remove and avoid.'

Let us suppose now that the players have been chosen, their parts settled, the dresses provided, and the plays duly rehearsed. Thursday after Trinity Sunday has duly come, and the delightful city of York is thronged with visitors from every side. Our ancestors were no lie-a-beds, and if we want to have a good view of the plays, we must take up our stand not long after 3 A.M., unless, that is, we are rich, when by paying from a shilling to four and fourpence, we can have a kind of stand in front of one of the sixteen places where the plays are to be performed, and need not arrive there till a little after four. The crowd is probably not quite so picturesque as that of our Italian city; but in medieval England, greens, blues, and reds would

*After 1426 it would be the Wednesday, for in that year a Friar Minor, named William Melton, persuaded the City Council to have the plays on the eve of the festival, a change certainly for the better.

not be lacking, and the now pervading black would be an exception. The crowd begins to grow impatient, when the first pageant is seen coming along. A string of horses are drawing an unwieldy waggon, on the top of which is a scaffolding arranged stagewise, and on this the players act. There are no exits or entrances; but if a player stands on one side he is supposed to be off the stage. The scaffolding is in two floors, the upper of which represents heaven, and the under hell, the mouth of which has just been repainted at a cost of fourpence. The players belong to the Guild of Barkers, and the play they enact is the Creation and Fall of Lucifer. Like all the early plays of the series, it is made painful to us by the introduction of the First Person of the Holy Trinity; but the contrast between the proud self-congratulation of Lucifer in heaven and his misery in hell is dramatic, and it is certain that the irreverence which is painful to us was non-existent for the original audience. The Barker's pageant would not take more than about twenty minutes to play (it is six pages of print), and at its conclusion their waggon would be hauled away to another of the sixteen playing places, and the Plasterers would take up their tale of the Creation of the World. So throughout the long summer's day, play would succeed play, until late in the afternoon the enactment by the Mercers of the forty-eighth pageant, the Day of Judgment, would at last bring the performance to an end.

A question which very naturally occurs is-what was the literary and, above all, what was the religious value of these plays? The question is not easy to answer. It is certain that the York plays were mostly written by men of the class by whom they were performed-well-to-do craftsmen, not altogether devoid of feeling, humour, or imagination, but absolutely without culture. The great length of the performance necessitated the introduction of humorous scenes by way of relief, and these are mostly great stumbling-blocks. The most famous, as well as the most pardonable, of these humorous incidents, is the difficulty which Noah finds in getting his wife into the Ark. With a certain loyalty, which the spectators would not fail to admire, she refuses to be saved unless her gossips are saved with her, until at last Shem, Ham, and Japheth have to bundle her in, despite her resistance. Such an incident, if it did not tend to edification, would do no great harm to an uncultivated audience; but the same cannot be said of the humorous dialogue between Pilate, his wife, and the beadle of the court immediately before the great scene of the Judgment Hall. Laughter here, even had it been produced by realism instead of buffoonery, would remain a crime, unpardonable, no matter how great the lack of education of playwright, players, and spectators. But though the plays of York were all written by craftsmen, this was not universally the case, and in order to show the better side and real literary value of some of these productions, I give a few quotations from the Pageant of the

a

Company of Shearmen and Tailors in Coventry,' a fifteenth-century play, of which the only MS. known was transcribed in 1534. The transcriber was not a very learned person, and, as his spelling is incorrect, even according to sixteenth-century ideas, I shall venture to transform it as far as possible into modern orthography. My first extract is from the salutation of the shepherds

PASTOR II.

PASTOR III.

Now hail be thou child, and thy dame,
For in a poor lodging here art thou laid;
So the angel said, and told us thy name.
Hold, take thou here my hat on thy head,
And now of one thing thou art well sped;
For weather thou hast no need to complain,
For wind, nor sun, hail, snow and rain.
Hail be thou lord over water and lands,
For thy coming all we may make mirth;
Have here my mittens to put on thy hands,
Other treasure have I none to present thee with.'

This cannot be called good as poetry; but it is interesting for its childlike simplicity, and for its genuine endeavour to realise the scene at the manger-bed, when the shepherds came that first Christmas morning to pay their homage. The next quotation has more poetic beauty. It is a conversation between two 'Prophets,' one of whom is inquiring of the other as to the shepherds' visit

Lastly, here is a little pastoral song, with a refrain so charming, that it seems crying aloud to be set anew to music—

As I rode out this end-year's night

Of three jolly shepherds I saw a sight,
And all about their fold a star shone bright;
They sang, terli, terlow;

So merrily the shepherds their pipes can blow.

Down from heaven, from heaven so high,
Of angels there came a great company,
With mirth and joy and great solemnity.
They sang, terli, terlow;

So merrily the shepherds their pipes can blow.'

Quotations like these will serve to show that these miracle plays, if, on the whole, of an antiquarian and historical interest rather than of intrinsic value, were yet not without touches of true poetry, and that their religious feeling, though overlaid with many incongruities, was yet real, and, according to their lights, pure and sincere.

AN OLD-WORLD LEGEND

BY MRS. KEIR MOILLIET.

The following is an attempt to interweave various fragments of legendary lore, derived partly from Arabic sources, by hearsay, and partly from passages taken from ancient writers, which it is thought may prove interesting.

"THE children of Adam increased in number, and their animal nature became strong, and all flesh corrupted itself.

And men loved pleasure rather than knowledge, and set up the worship of things of sense in the place of Allah; and they all did the same thing, and followed the same voice, in respect of their thoughts, language, feelings, and aspirations.

Then came the Deluge, for with water, the great purifier, did Allah wash out the unclean.

'Once more, through Noah, was the earth repeopled.

'On the plains of Shinar, where stood the Mother of civilisation (Babylon), the children of Noah were gathered together.

'And their intellectual nature became strong, and they loved knowledge rather than pleasure, and set up the worship of things mental in the place of Allah; and they all did the same thing, and followed the same voice, in respect of their thoughts, language, feelings, and aspirations.

'Then Allah beheld, through the clouds of heaven, the doings of the Tower-builders, and disallowed them.

'At His voice the very bonds of human character were dissolved. The thoughts, language, feelings, and aspirations which, heretofore, men held in common, became individual and various, for the root itself of speech was riven at the voice of Allah.

'And none could understand his brother, and none verily could supply his brother's needs, nor mourn at his grief, nor rejoice at his joy. The self-same words and well-accustomed sounds bore other meaning to the ear of each, and the harmony among men was changed to discord.

'And the children of Noah were dispersed from the four corners of the Tower (pyramid) which they had built at Babel.

Then the gentle angels in the firmament above, pitying the woe of man, smote their golden harps, and filled the heavens with mournful sounds.

And Allah, the All-merciful, inclined His ear to them, and held back the confusion of the thoughts, language, feelings, and aspirations of men from running into utterness.

And the pyramid became thereafter a symbol that, in the fulness